Phallic asparagus, vaginal mussels, ripened fruit, even pepperoni pizza galore, food is sex, blood, delusions and life itself in paintings by Mimi Yokoo.
The meals are spottled with dots of feverish color.
Her brushstrokes pulsate like swirling psychedelic veins.
She uses glitter and beads in some places, playfully plops fake birds with feathers on the canvas.
She sets an elaborate dinner table with such manic prim and proper detail everything on the top half of the canvas is reflected upside down in the bottom half like a mirror into the unknown.
Why is food so sad?
Food and fat and appetite celebrate orgasm, fertility and birth.
But women aren’t allowed to eat.
They stay thin.
And all the food grows dizzyingly larger than life, enticing menacingly, forbidden jewels of desire/hunger/taste.
I went to a gallery opening for Mimi Yokoo’s paintings at Nantenshi Gallery.